Department will begin accepting applications for its January 2015 police academy, and it's pushing for a larger percentage of women and minority applicants

On Tuesday the department will begin accepting applications for its January 2015 police academy, and they're pushing for a larger percentage of women and minority applicants.

Colorado Springs police recruiter Robert Wilson said the idea is for the city's police department to be representative of the community, which is half female.

"We hire from the neck up," he said, because being a police officer is not just about muscle, it's also about critical thinking skills and conflict resolution.

"We want people who can think through issues," he said.

After years of being understaffed, the department is increasing its officer numbers, and a bigger pool of applicants means more female candidates, said Colorado Springs Police department spokeswoman Lt. Catherine Buckley.

Of the 641 sworn officers on the department, 12.5 percent, or 80 officers, are female, she said.

That number is slightly higher than the national average of 11.9 percent, the most recent figure reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. It's about 2.5 percent below the average for police departments serving populations between 250,000 and 499,000.

It's a percentage that's been consistent since the early 90s, when the department saw a surge in female officers, Buckley said.

The surge coincided with the appointment of a new police chief in 1991. Lorne Kramer, a 28-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department served as the Colorado Springs police chief for more than a decade and then later went on to become city manager of Colorado Springs.

Kramer retired from the city in 2007 and now runs his Springs-based consulting and executive search firm, KRW Associates.

When Colorado Springs hired its first uniformed female police officer in 1974, Kramer was overseeing a field training program for female officers for the LAPD academy, a program created in the aftermath of Title VII Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972.

Before then, female officers had few opportunities for promotion and were limited to roles in administrative, juvenile and jail work. They didn't go through field training.

"I think I was like a lot of people in law enforcement at the time. I was very skeptical," Kramer said. "But, when I went to the academy and saw how the women performed and how they trained, I became a convert," he said.

He eventually married one of those female officers, a detective who oversaw internal female-discrimination issues. Kena Kramer served for more than two decades before retiring, and Kramer she inspired the lead character in the 90s CBS TV show, "Under Suspicion."

When Kramer came to Colorado Springs and stepped into the role of police chief, there were only a handful of women on the Colorado Springs Police Department.

"I started asking questions about why the department had so few women." he said. "Frankly, there were not really many good answers. There was not a conscious outreach to recruit women," he said.

So he led the department in an aggressive campaign for female recruitment, visiting college campuses and implementing policies that would make the job not only more appealing, but more attainable.

That meant changing the physical tests and removing what he called "built-in disqualifiers" related to upper body strength, in addition to providing strength training opportunities for potential candidates, he said.

That meant equipment changes too: changing the handgrips on guns to suit smaller hands, providing women with Sally Browne duty belts that curved to accommodate women's hips, and bullet-proof vests that were created for a female physique.

The shock plate on the old vests used to go up to women's chins, and the duty belts dug into their hips, said Lt. Maggie Santos, who joined the Springs police department in 1992 and now oversees its internal affairs department.

Aside from equipment changes, city employment policies had to be changed, too.

In particular, Kramer said he targeted a policy mandating that city workers who were away from their job for more than 90 days would be forced to relinquish their position.

"We tried to eliminate some of the stigma in the department," Kramer said.

Changing the policies allowed women to spend time with their children without worrying about losing their jobs or chances for advancement, he said.

New breast feeding policies were also introduced, and breast milk began to appear in breakroom freezers.

Santos recalled the days right after the policies changed.

"In the early 90s, nine of us got pregnant at the same. They had to figure something out," said Santos, who has two kids. "I think probably half of us have kids."

Kramer created a women's coordinator position, who met with women routinely to get good feedback about the type of challenges they encountered, which included not getting backup when they called for it.

The work paid off, but getting there wasn't easy.

"Twenty-five years ago we didn't have any female lieutenants. Now we have 6." Santos said.

The department currently has two female commanders, and will have seven female lieutenants in June.

"It took a lot of work. It took a lot of perseverance. I give the women who went through that an awful lot of credit," Kramer said.